Clutch

It looks like there's at least two different things being run together here.

1) That if rational processes are (historically? constitutionally?) based in nonrational processes, there is no reason to trust them.

2) That one relies on inference to reason about the reliability of inference; hence a circularity threatens.

The two are crucially distinct, since one could hold one's rational faculties to have been supernaturally created by some other rational mind, while yet entertaining doubts about their reliability. So (2) has no particular relevance to Lewis's argument against historical/constitutional naturalism towards rationality. But what shores up (1), then?

(1) goes completely unwarranted. The only thing that would muddy the waters would be to use "irrational" rather than "nonrational" in framing it. As Lewis does. But this is a perverse usage, comparable to calling the moon false, on the grounds that the moon isn't true.

Underlying (1) seems to be something like the principle, "Rational processes cannot come from nonrational processes". But this, presumably, is what's to be proven.

Anyone who thinks that rational processes can, indeed do, come from nonrational natural processes will hold that, of the many causal connections between events in the universe, some count as reasoning. Not all cases count as reasoning, of course. Water flowing downhill: that's not reasoning. Even some strictly psychological causal connections don't count as reasoned; Donald Davidson gives some ingenious examples in which S intends to do X, S's intention to do X causes S to do X, but S didn't intentionally do X. "Deviant causal chains", he calls them. But when the right sort of conditions, actual and counterfactual, hold between psycho-physical events, then these count as rational, as instances of reasoning.

Going back to Russell, Smart, Feigl, Carnap... nobody has denied that the class of physical events that amount to instances of reasoning is a very, very small sub-class indeed.

Yet Lewis's case boils down to the observation that some merely causal connections are positively not characterizable as rational inference. Why this would be thought even vaguely inconsistent with the view of an evolutionary psycho-physicalist is opaque.

Volker

Yes, exactly that is what Lewis trying to say to us. If this would be true, of course, than even god isn't able to think rational, so even the thought of believers are unjustified.

Sometimes, this sems to be a very plausible explanation ... :banghead:

Clutch

Okay. I don't see why we're supposed to believe it on the basis of what he or Plantinga or bd has said. The reasoning seems to shade off into, "But if those natural processes are unreliable, you can't appeal to your judgement of their success in order to vindicate them." When in fact this problem, if it is a problem, is common to any account of reasoning, and has nothing to do with naturalism, physicalism, evolution... or whatever.

bd-from-kg

Llyricist:

Not so, at least in my opinion. But it’s true (Lewis is right on this point) that we cannot rationally justify our “foundational presuppositions”. In particular, we cannot show that our reasoning processes (i.e., our cognitive faculties) are rational. Any such attempt is necessarily circular.

Can anyone actually define “rational” ? More to the point, can anyone really define “rationally justified”? This is a very contentious subject in epistemology. But obviously Lewis is right that his “Rule” is taken for granted in our everyday reasoning and that in this context, at least, it is perfectly valid. If you know that a belief that you have can be traced entirely to a physical cause (a electrical impulse resulting from a pathological condition in your brain, for example) you would not be rationally justified in continuing to believe it. No one really disputes this. There is no school of thought in epistemology that would reject this conclusion.

No. Lewis isn’t even talking about the difference between “correct” and “faulty” reasoning. He’s distinguishing between beliefs that are ultimately produced by reasoning (faulty or otherwise) and ones that aren’t. All of his examples are clearly of beliefs that are not produced by reasoning at all, not of beliefs that are the product of faulty reasoning.

Well, of course he presumed that all thoughts have a “reason” of some sort for existing. That is, they are caused by something.

Of course he did. It’s just that he used the word “irrational” for what we would nowadays call “nonrational”. (This is perfectly obvious to anyone who reads the entire chapter 3 of Miracles.) This may have been an unfortunate choice of terminology, but it doesn’t vitiate his argument. Anyway, this point has by now been pounded into the ground. Enough already.

Not so. In fact, Lewis gives yet another example later in the same chapter:

It’s true that Lewis seems to conflate two different kinds of “causes”: purely physical ones (a bit of bone, a liver attack, alcohol) and desires or emotions that subconsciously distort the reasoning process. Only the former are really relevant to his argument. But he gives several of these, and they’re sufficient to illustrate the point.

I have no idea how to answer the question “What is reason based on?”; I’m not even sure that it’s meaningful. But here are some examples of reason that are clearly not based on an understanding of cause and effect: (1) the proofs that there are infinitely many primes and that the square root of two is irrational (or for that matter the proof of any mathematical theorem); (2) “All men are mortal;, Socrates is a man’ therefore Socrates is mortal. (3) John is taller than Mary and Jim is taller than John, so Jim is taller than Mary. Here’s a less trivial example: you arrive on an unexplored island. Very soon you encounter a small furry creature. Then another, and yet another. You say, “I’ll bet there are thousands of these things on this island.” This is clearly a case of inductive reasoning, but it does not involve any understanding of cause and effect.

Anyway, what this has to do with Lewis’s argument is beyond me.

Maybe that’s because it’s not clear to me what your objection is. If any individual thought is rendered suspect if it can be traced entirely to nonrational causes, how does the same conclusion not apply to “human reason as a whole”? Isn’t this just a term for all instances of human reasoning taken collectively?

Don’t get me wrong. I think you may be on to something, but if so you haven’t made it very clear. If you could make the argument that you seem to have in the back of your mind more explicit ...?

Actually it’s possible that I’m “improving on” his argument, because I’m familiar with later refinements of it. But if so it’s unintentional, and I certainly can’t “take credit” for it. (Nor would I want to, since I think that even the improved versions are ultimately untenable.)

Anyway, I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment expressed by John Galt, Jr. on another thread:

If what we’re interested in is whether there’s anything in Lewis’s argument (especially given that he wasn’t a professional philosopher (his specialty was medieval poetry) and that his books on Christianity were written largely for a lay audience, this is the only sensible approach.

Biff the unclean

When in fact this problem, if it is a problem, is common to any account of reasoning, and has nothing to do with naturalism, physicalism, evolution... or whatever.
And that is the very hypocrisy I was talking about.

Clutch

Biff, I agree with bd that we shouldn't attribute hypocrisy where other explanations will do. Lewis isn't very philosophically accomplished. Whether philosophy is anything more than the making and keeping of fine distinctions is an open question -- but it is at least that much. I think the somewhat subtle distinction between what I label as (1) and (2) above has eluded Lewis. And maybe Plantinga too, who is more philosophically accomplished, but perhaps not highly motivated to see the defects in the purported reasoning.

I'm open to being shown a good argument in, or based on, or analogous to, Lewis's remarks. But I sure don't see one there now.

Llyricist

(1) Excuse me, but ALL theorems in Math are ultimately based on If...then statements. If you don't see how this relates to cause and effect, you are quite right in saying it's pointless to argue further.

(2) Socrates is Mortal Because he is a man, no relationship to cause and effect there!! sheeeesh (this is sarcasm btw)

(3) again you are giving the cause of Jim being taller than Mary, indirectly yes, but nonetheless it is based on cause and effect relationships.

and your final examples are based on ideas and thereoms arrived at by observation AND AN UNDERSTANADING OF CAUSE AND EFFECT

The very reason it's called reasoning is because it's based on giving reasons! Which is the same thing utterly as giving causes. Are you being deliberately obtuse?

And this is CENTRAL to the argument, the very fact that one must use reasoning to determine the reasons behind thoughts before judging them "irrational" separates reasoning from the idea of rational or irrational thought as illustrated by Lewis.

And you are seriously equivocating trying to separate the idea of bad reasons from faulty reasoning. Just because other philosophers and "intellectuals" are sucked into it, doesn't make it valid.

Quite simply the only thought that COULD exist without any form of reason, would be called inspiration, and then it would need to be tested using reasoning and observation before being validated. But Lewis doesn't even address this, because it's utterly destructive to his argument. Before the thought is tested, you cannot judge it as invalid, and it MAY be valid. hence, as pointed out before by someone else, NON rational causes CAN have valid results.

I didn't need to go into that except for your insistance on not understanding the difference between "rational and irrational thought" as described by Lewis, and "human reason" which was the break in his line of reasoning that invalidated the rest.

Llyricist

Thank you for the re-formulation, this makes it easier. I think I took care of the non-rational cause argument in my last post.

But now you are contradicting yourself, you claimed that the irrational thoughts in the examples were NOT based on reasoning, therefore how can they be included as an instance of human reasoning? You cannot have it both ways. Either irrational thought is a result of faulty reasoning, OR they cannot be included in the set of human reasoning, either way the argument fails.

Clutch

Llyricist, I have no idea what you're talking about. Are you suggesting that one causes two? (if taken twice, presumably?) That Jim's height causes Mary's height to be the shorter? While her height causes his height to be taller?

Notice the difference:

(a) Reasoning is a causal process.

(b) Every case of reasoning is about causality.

(c) Every case of reasoning requires one to think about causality.

(a) may well be true. (I think it almost certainly is.) (b) is very unlikely, though, and (c) is certainly false, as bd's examples show.

Llyricist

No my point was that an If.. Then formulation translates directly to
if = cause
then = effect
In human reasoning it gets far more abstract than to say Jim's height causes Mary's height to be shorter, but the reasoning used to determine that depended on If .. then formulations, which again were BASED on cause and effect relationships.

If I hit you, then you will probably feel pain is a direct illustration of this, though it CAN be and usually is far more complex or abstract than this. But if you trace down all reasoning to it's source (all the proofs and axioms) you will find a direct and non-abstract cause and effect relationship at it's core.

You seem to interpret my statement that reasoning is based on the understanding of cause and effect to mean that all reasoning is nothing more than showing a direct cause and effect relationship, which is NOT the case and not what I claimed.